


The News From Home

by ariadnes_string



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Awn always enjoyed reading her sister's poetry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The News From Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jibrailis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibrailis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Jibrailis! Thanks for the opportunity to write about Lieutenant Awn--I hope you enjoy!
> 
> No spoilers for the events of _Ancillary Sword_ , but you'll notice a significant passage quoted verbatim from the book. Credit for that, along with the world and the characters, belongs to the amazing Ann Leckie.
> 
> Thanks to i for the beta--all remaining mistakes entirely my own!

_Thank you for the images of Orsian flowers_ , Basnaaid wrote. _I have tried to put them into my new poem:_

_They sat together upon the carpet of brilliant blue and white._  
 _I will serve you always, said Iqsiaal._  
 _My loyalty will cover you like these exquisite flowers cover the earth, said Dakk._  
 _Like petals on a single bud were they. Who was client then? Who patron?_

_It is to be an epic poem of friendship. What do you think?_

Awn puzzled at the lines. What _did_ she think? The language was certainly more skillful than anything she could have come up with at that age—or at any age, to be honest. But it was an oddly pastoral image for an epic poem, as if the child’s desire to play outside had intersected oddly with the assignment. Was this kind of thing good poetry? 

“It’s not bad,” said _Justice of Toren_. Awn started. Sometimes she still forgot that Ship saw everything that passed through its communications networks.

“I don’t know,” Awn said. “She’s only nine. But our parents are glad to be able to give her lessons. They think it will smooth her way in life.”

“Yes,” said Ship, for it also, of course, knew how Awn’s salary was allocated.

“She always did like plants.” 

Awn could remember Basnaaid as a toddler, digging in the dirt with her hands, holding up some spectacularly ugly root in triumph, mud everywhere, even on her teeth. Had Awn been there when that happened, or had she only seen a picture? She’d been gone so long. Suddenly, her spark of pride in Basnaaid’s accomplishments was almost doused by a melancholy sense of how much her family had been changed by Awn’s ascension to the officer class. What would Basniaad’s life be like now, a poet in a family of cooks? 

Awn scrubbed surreptitiously at her eyes, relieved that only Ship was privy to her bout of homesickness. There seemed something improper about her feelings, though she wasn’t sure exactly what. That was the kind of thing that made her most anxious, not being sure whether her responses were proper or not. Ship didn’t seem to mind. But Ship wasn’t high-born Radchaai. It wasn’t even human.

After that, Awn tried to put Basnaaid’s poem out of her mind. But she was still thinking about it later in the day when she turned into a corridor and saw her own suppressed tears mirrored on the face of one of her Esk ancillaries.

It was an odd scene. The segment stood alone and motionless, its fists clenched at its sides. Its face was utterly blank, contoured only by the wet tracks glinting in the artificial light.

“What’s wrong?” Awn asked. “Are you in pain?” 

As she drew closer, she saw that this was a new segment. Its hook-up, Awn remembered, had not gone smoothly. Medic had been occupied for a while dealing with the various issues, but Awn had thought them all sorted out.

Jerkily, the ancillary shook its head. It unclenched its fists, but otherwise did not move.

“Shall I take you to Medical?”

Again the ancillary shook its head. “It’s nothing,” it said, its voice appropriately flat.

On impulse—an impulse she surely would not have indulged so quickly had she not spent the morning thinking of her sister—Awn stepped forward and put an arm around the ancillary’s shoulders. “It will be all right,” she said, squeezing gently. The ancillary’s muscles were unyielding. “It hurts, I know, but this is a good ship, and One Esk is a good decade. Soon you will sing with the others.”

The singing had unnerved Awn initially: the same song coming out of twenty mouths, the inhuman polyphony. But she’d grown used to it—learned, indeed, to take a kind of pride in it; it was something distinctive about her command, after all, no matter how much ridicule it came in for. At times, she even felt a kind of envy for it: it must be something, to know with such precision where one’s voice fit in the harmony, to never hit a wrong note because one wasn’t sure of the song.

A rustle of footsteps sounded in the corridor behind them. Awn braced herself for a reprimand, though she did not move her arm. 

But it was only three more One Esks—summoned no doubt by Ship’s awareness of the segment’s distress. They silently saluted Awn, then surrounded the segment and moved it gently down the corridor.

They had begun singing, very low, Awn noticed as she stood aside to let them pass. After a moment, a fourth voice joined the other three.

+

_They nestled together like the cups of a tea service. Their friendship_  
 _Was a perfect blend of leaves, brought to steaming richness by the scalding water_  
 _Of affection._

Awn blushed. Her sister was a _child_! What had they been teaching her in these poetry classes? She would have to write to her parents about it.

“What are you reading?” Skaaiat asked, teasingly. “Notes from another admirer?” She traced a finger down Awn’s naked back. “You’re turning color even here. It’s charming.”

Awn shivered at the touch, cursing skin that showed a blush so easily. “Nothing. Family news. It’s very silly.” She spoke carefully. Even in their more intimate moments, she didn’t like her accent to falter, although Skaaiat never teased her about it.

“Families are always silly,” Skaaiat said, her caresses turning serious. “Except when they are something worse.”

It was very hard to resist Skaaiat when she set her mind to pleasure, and Awn soon forgot Basnaaid’s poem. 

Only to remember it again the next morning, watching One Esk lay out the tea service and pour water over the leaves. Steam rose from the pot, and Awn felt heat on her own skin, like leftover warmth from her time with Skaaiat. When the tea had steeped, the One Esk brought her a cup.

Awn had gotten used to many things about life as an officer, but this, the constant body service, was the hardest. In her family home they had cooked for themselves, dressed themselves, and drawn their own baths. She didn’t think she would ever find it natural to be waited upon by others. 

Yet it all seemed to come so easily to those born to it. She thought of her first meeting with Skaaiat, the confidence with which she’d burst into Awn’s life. They had known, of course, that _Justice of Ente’s_ Seven Issa had been sent to administer the territory bordering Ors-- _human troops_ , Ship had informed her, _commanded by a lieutenant from House Awer_ \--but hadn’t thought there’d be much contact.

And then one day, a day so hot and humid Awn had shed both uniform and shirt, a stranger had strode into their new headquarters only moments behind the warning sent by the segments standing guard.

“They told me I’d find you in the lower city,” Lieutenant Skaaiat had said, while Awn tried to take in her dark, aristocratic features, her crisp uniform, her beautifully modulated vowels. “But I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Shit,” Awn had said, dismayed to have been caught in such bureaucratic chaos.

“Language,” One Esk had reproved her softly.

Skaaiat had surveyed them, one eyebrow going up. Awn had waited for those lovely lips to twist into a sneer. For that well-bred voice to deliver a carefully calibrated insult. Neither had happened. Instead, Skaaiat had broken into a seemingly delighted grin. “Well done,” she’d said. “About time someone shook things up.” 

Now, oddly stirred by the memory, Awn sipped her cooling tea. Last night, she was sure of it, Skaaiat had tried to bring up clientship, seizing on their joking exchange about family to mention the benefits accruing to everyone when one member of a family took clientship with a powerful house. Awn had changed the subject with more force than tact, she realized now. But she didn’t need Awer's charity. Their friendship was—it was very pleasant. But she couldn’t have her fellow officers thinking that she’d kneeled for advantage. If Skaaiat had been insulted by her rebuff, she hadn’t shown it.

One Esk broke her reverie by taking the empty tea cup from her. After setting it on the side table, the segment held out a package done up in rough, Orsian paper.

“What’s this?” Awn asked. The ancillary, blank-faced, pulled the string binding the package, and spread the wrappings to reveal a pair of pristine gloves 

Awn’s first response, as so often, was a stab of anticipatory shame. Were her own gloves soiled? Faded? In some other way unbefitting an officer of the Radch?

It took only an instant for One Esk to interpret her response. “There is nothing wrong with your gloves,” the segment said expressionlessly. “But these were a good price for the quality, and it never hurts to patronize the local merchants. Will you try them on?”

Helplessly, Awn nodded. She held out her hands.

The ancillary pulled off the gloves Awn was wearing in movements calculated not to tear the material. Its hands were cool and steady. Then it eased the new gloves on, tugging the edges carefully between Awn’s fingers. The gloves fit perfectly, a lighter fabric than Awn was used to, more suitable to the climate.

“Thank you,” she said, touched, as always, by the care her One Esks took of her. 

The segment nodded, gathered up the wrappings and began to clear the breakfast plates.

+

Things were not going well for Dakk and Iqsiaal—or Bolur and Ipsiaal as they were now known. Basniaad kept changing the names. Their alliance had broken on the rocks of political ambition, as Dakk/Bolur grew more radical and Iqsiaal/Ipsiaal tried to make peace with the existing regime. Or so Awn had interpreted the endless fights about Dakk’s desire to “blow things up,” and Iqsiaal’s insistence on “talking things out.” Of course, Basnaaid, being nine years old, might have meant something completely different. The poem’s plotline had grown convoluted. And Awn herself was easily distracted since she’d been recalled from Shis’urna.

One passage, however, had lodged itself in her mind:

_The touch of sour and cold regret, like pickled fish  
Ran down her back. Oh how had she believed the awful lies?_

_Dear sister_ , Awn began. _Thank you for sharing your poem with me. I am enjoying it very much, and I am glad to see you applying yourself to your studies_. She sounded so formal. _Do you still play?_ She wanted to ask. _Do you ever run so fast you feel you will lose yourself in air?_

_I hope you have not let your commitment to poetry lead you to neglect other pursuits, however_ , she wrote instead. _And I must caution you against the emotion of regret._ Of course, the regret might belong to the characters’ and not to Basnaaid’s herself, but Awn couldn’t be bothered to sort that out now. 

_The gods do not reward us for hindsight. When we give our loyalty voluntarily, we cannot regret the actions that come from that choice. Those acts have already happened, and cannot be changed. The world is in the hands of Amaat. If we find that we have acted in error, we must work to make things right. If we find that things we believed are lies, we must work to make the truth known._

Awn sighed, rereading what she’d written. It was all so clear in her head, but when she tried to get it down in words, it grew muddled. Or perhaps it was the other way around; the letter made things seem simple that were really very complicated. 

She began again, then frowned. One Esk was trying to get her attention. She was expected somewhere, which was odd, since Awn had been sure nothing was scheduled for this time.

She would have to finish her letter to Basnaaid later.


End file.
